“All the same, he is too much of a bully for me,” said Hjerrild, “unpardonably rude, but perhaps that is why he is irresistible to women. Rather too plebeian for my taste.”
“That was exactly what …”—she searched for the right words—“what I admired in him was that he had made his way from the bottom of the ladder to where he now stands—such a struggle must necessarily make one brutal, it seems to me. Don’t you think that a great deal—almost anything—can be excused from that point of view?”
“Nonsense, Cesca,” said Heggen suddenly. “Hans Hermann was discovered when he was thirteen, and has been helped along ever since.”
“Yes, but to have to accept help always, to have to thank other people for everything and always be afraid of being ignored, neglected, reminded of being—as Hjerrild just said—of plebeian origin.”
“I might say the same about myself—the last, I mean.”
“No, you cannot, Gunnar. I’m sure you have always been superior to your surroundings. When you came among people of higher social standing than the one you were born to, you were superior even there. You were cleverer; you had greater knowledge and a finer mind. You could always feel strong in the consciousness of having done it all yourself. You were never obliged to thank people that you knew looked down upon you because of your low birth, who snobbishly supported a talent which they did not understand, and who were inferior, though believing they stood above you. You did not have to thank people you could not feel grateful to. No, Gunnar, you cannot speak of the feelings of a man of the people, because you have never had them—you don’t know what they are.”
“A man who accepts the kind of help you speak of from people he cannot be grateful to is decidedly a plebeian, it seems to me.”
“Oh, but can’t you understand that one does such a thing when one knows one has talent—perhaps genius—that craves to be developed? It seems to me that you, who call yourself a democrat, should not speak like that about lower-class individuals.”
“A man who respects his talent does not want to see it prostituted. As to being a democrat—social democracy is the craving for justice, and justice claims that men of his type should be subjugated, pressed down to the very bottom of the community, chained and forgotten. The real, legitimate lower class must be thoroughly subdued.”
“A most peculiar socialism,” laughed Hjerrild.
“There is no other for grown-up people. I don’t take into account those blue-eyed, childish souls who believe that everybody is good and that all evil is the fault of the community. If everyone were good, the community would be a paradise, but the vulgar souls spoil it. You find them in every grade of life. If they are masters, they are cruel and brutal; if they are servants, they are servile and cringing—and stupid. I have found them among the socialists too, for that matter—well, Hermann calls himself a socialist. If they find hands stretched out to lift them up, they grasp them—and stamp on them afterwards. If they see a troop marching past, they join it to get part of the booty, but loyalty and fellowship they have none. They laugh secretly at the aim, the ideal, and they hate justice, for they know that if it were to prevail they would come off badly.
“All those who are afraid of justice I call legitimately lower-class, and they should be fought without mercy. If they have any power with the poor and weak, they frighten and tyrannize them till they too become the same. If they are poor and weak themselves, they give up the struggle, and make their way by begging and flattering—or plundering if they have an opportunity.
“No, the ideal is a community governed by upper-class individuals, for they never fight for themselves; they know their own endless resources, and they give with open hands to those who are poorer. They endeavour to bring light and air to every possibility for good and beauty in the inferior souls—those who are neither this nor that; good when they can afford it, bad when the proletariat forces them to be so. The power should be in the hands of those who feel the responsibility for every good impulse that is killed.”
“You are wrong about Hans Hermann,” said Cesca quietly. “It was not for his own sake alone that he rebelled against social injustice. He, too, spoke of the good impulses that were wasted. When we walked about in the east end and saw the pale little children, he said he would like to set fire to the ugly, sad, crowded barracks where they lived.”
“Mere talk. If the rent had been paid to him. …”
“For shame, Gunnar!” said Cesca impetuously.
“All the same he would not have been a socialist if he had been born rich—but still a true proletarian.”
“Are you sure you would have been a socialist yourself,” said Cesca, “if you had been born a count, for instance?”
“Mr. Heggen is a count,” said Hjerrild, laughing, “of many airy castles.”
Heggen sat silent for a minute. “I have never felt I was born poor,” he said, speaking as if to himself.
“As to Hermann’s love for children,” said Hjerrild, “there was not much of it for his own child. And the way he treated his wife was disgraceful. He begged and pleaded till he got her, but when she was going to have the baby, she had to beg and implore him to marry her.”
“Have they got a little boy?” whispered Francesca.
“Yes; he arrived after they had been married six weeks, just the day I left Berlin. When they had been married a month Hermann left her and went to Dresden. I don’t see why they did not marry before, as they had agreed to divorce anyhow. She wanted it.”
“How disgraceful,” said Jenny, who had been listening to the conversation. “To marry with the intention to divorce!”
“Well,” said Hjerrild, smiling. “When people know each other in
